Gay-Straight Alliance can have club at school

The judge says the teen plaintiff from Okeechobee likely will win her lawsuit.

April 7, 2007|By Maya Bell, Sentinel Staff Writer

MIAMI -- A gay student who, against a backdrop of taunts and condemnation, sued for the right to establish a Gay-Straight Alliance at her school received an early graduation gift Friday: A federal judge ruled the club can begin meeting on campus immediately.

"I'm really happy," senior Yasmin Gonzalez said from her home in Okeechobee.

"I don't know if it will end harassment at school, but at least other students will have someone to talk to, which is something I didn't have."

Gonzalez said she intends to call her first campus meeting within two weeks.

The 12-page order by U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore does not end Gonzalez's lawsuit against the Okeechobee County School Board but allows the club to gather at the county's only high school while the litigation proceeds.

Still, Moore's order, in which he says Gonzalez has "a substantial likelihood" of proving her case, all but guarantees the board will have to follow the lead of hundreds of schools across the nation, including more than 100 in Florida, that already sponsor school-based alliances. Founded in Massachusetts in 1988, the clubs aim to end harassment and promote tolerance of gay students.

"The language doesn't get any clearer," said Gonzalez's lawyer, Rob Rosenwald of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida. "Hopefully, the school board will see that the court will not rule in its favor and end this costly litigation."

School Board Chairman Joe Arnold said board members would discuss their options with their attorney before deciding whether to appeal.

The board lawyer, David Gibbs of Largo, could not be reached for comment.

In his order, Moore rejected the board's argument that Gay-Straight Alliances, or GSAs, are "sex-based" clubs that would violate the district's abstinence-only education policy and endanger the well-being of students by exposing them to obscene and sexually explicit material.

Rather, Moore wrote, the board failed to show that the purpose of the club was anything other than what Gonzalez and other members say it would be in their proposed charter: "to provide a safe, supportive environment for students and to promote tolerance and acceptance of one another, regardless of sexual orientation.''

In November, Gonzalez, now 18, became the first Florida student to sue her principal and school board over the right to establish a GSA. She did so a month after the principal, Toni Weirsma, refused to recognize the club, saying Okeechobee High does not allow any clubs unrelated to the school curriculum to meet on campus.

School Superintendent Pat Cooper and other school officials quickly weighed in, saying GSAs would promote sexual activity and offend the conservative values of Okeechobee, a town of 5,500 on its namesake lake.

Judging from reaction by local ministers and letters to the editor in the local paper, many Okeechobee residents agreed. They called Gonzalez an abomination in the eyes of God and urged the ACLU to leave "our nice little churchgoing town alone."

But Gonzalez and the ACLU said they had the law on their side, ironically handed to them in 1984, when Congress passed the Equal Access Act to allow student-prayer groups and Bible classes to meet in public schools during non-class hours. The courts have since ruled the act applies to Gay-Straight Alliances, too.